Colton Chapple and Treavor Scales knew when they signed with Harvard they were choosing something different, a school better known for producing presidents than NFL stars. But in between classes in psychopharmacology and African languages, the quarterback from Alpharetta and the running back from Stone Mountain have squeezed in some serious football.
On Saturday, they ended their college football careers by leading the nation’s oldest university to a feat it had never before accomplished, a sixth consecutive victory over Yale in a contest so important to the nation’s elite they call it simply The Game. Harvard’s 34-24 triumph might make its biggest headlines in New England, but its biggest stars came from Georgia.
Chapple ran for one touchdown and threw for two, including the go-ahead score with 4 minutes, 44 seconds left. Scales ran for 177 yards, matching the highest total ever by a Harvard player against Yale. The final 63 yards came on the clinching touchdown run. After crossing the goal line, he thrust both arms skyward and reveled in the roar bouncing off the concrete of Harvard Stadium.
“The only phrase that crossed my mind was, ‘Momma, I made it,’” Scales said.
“I can’t express enough just how much of a blessing this opportunity was. I feel so honored to be able to call myself a Harvard football player. All of those thoughts, all of those sentiments, all of the thank yous that you can’t express on a daily basis, that’s what was going through my head at that time.”
Chapple and Scales won a league championship as juniors. As seniors, they went 8-2, 5-2 in the Ivies, while powering an offense that scored a league-record 394 points.
Still, Yale, 2-8 and 1-6, led 24-20 midway through the fourth quarter after converting a bad decision by Chapple into an interception inside the Harvard 30. Chapple and his teammates suddenly faced the prospect of becoming the first Crimson players to lose to Yale since 2006.
“I can’t lie to you,” Chapple said. “Yeah, it crossed my mind.”
Then he crossed the field, running 61 yards on the first play after Yale’s touchdown. A 4-yard completion to Cameron Brate was Chapple’s school-record 24th touchdown pass this season and put Harvard ahead to stay.
Georgia is not only a red state but a Crimson one as well. Harvard has 157 undergraduates from Georgia, 13 of them on its football roster. There were no Georgia players dressed in Yale blue. Harvard coach Tim Murphy said his staff has built recruiting success in Georgia over the past seven years.
Neither Chapple nor Scales knew much about Harvard football until they got recruited. Choosing an Ivy school means foregoing football opportunities available elsewhere. Chief among those is the chance to compete in the playoffs or a bowl game. The Ivies banned postseason play decades ago; the world has changed since Harvard’s 1919 team won the national championship and the Rose Bowl. Still, Harvard offered opportunities other schools didn’t.
“As a parent you say I hope he realizes what we’ve been teaching him as a kid, that education is first,” Steven Scales said. “When he said, ‘Dad, Mom, I want to go to Harvard,’ we said, ‘He gets it.’”
Scales is majoring in economics. If he can’t make a living playing football, he hopes to get paid for talking about it. Scales got a look behind the scenes during internships at Comcast SportsNet New England and at the flagship radio station of the Boston Bruins and New England Patriots.
Chapple is majoring in psychology, and he, too, wants to stay in sports. If he can’t match the NFL exploits of Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, Harvard class of 2005, he’d like to follow in the footsteps of Andrew Berry, the Indianapolis Colts’ pro scouting coordinator, who was an All-American cornerback for Harvard when Chapple was a Greater Atlanta Christian senior.
Scales played his high school football for Dunwoody. The summer before their freshman year at Harvard, Chapple and Scales met every couple of weeks to throw and catch and learn the offense. Scales succeeded on the field first, becoming the 2009 Ivy rookie of the year. This season, they paired up as a dominant duo.
“If they’re not the best two in the league, they’re right at the top,” Yale coach Tony Reno said.
In a game with five lead changes, Scales and Chapple worked together until the end. Harvard led by only three when Chapple fumbled a shotgun snap; Scales fell on the ball. Instead of the Bulldogs having the ball 20 yards from a tying field goal, the Crimson retained possession with 1:24 to play. Chapple gave Scales a thank-you hug during the ensuing timeout.
“He saved my [expletive],” Chapple said. “That would have been disastrous.”
Two plays later, Scales was in the end zone, and the game was won.
Chapple completed 22 of 32 passes, and he ran for 128 yards. But it’s the results on the scoreboard every time he played Yale that will stick with him longer than any other statistic.
“Three, four, 30 years down the road, to say we never lost to Yale, that means something special,” Chapple said.
